Schism
by siobhane
Summary: Zell is faced with a choice between duty and loyalty. Sometimes promises were meant to be broken. (Danse Macabre )


Zell steps off the train in Balamb to an empty platform, the only passenger to disembark this late at night. It's the end of the line, the last train until morning.

No one welcomes him home with a warm smile or open arms. Not at this hour, and not any other time of day.

His footsteps echo above the rumble of the train's engine, his gait slow, a funeral march toward a home that might as well be a thousand miles away.

No one waits for him there, either. His world is an empty place full of strangers and co-workers, missions and training. He stays too busy to be lonely, but it creeps up on him at times like these, when the distractions fade into the background and he's found himself stranded somewhere between midnight and sunrise.

He misses the way things used to be, when the future lay ahead of him like a vivid gold-bright dawn and brimmed with possibilities. They slayed the proverbial dragon, brought down a monster so great, it defied the imagination. They lied to themselves, thought they were invincible, untouchable, their future without limit or barriers. They could do anything they wanted, their lives safeguarded by the death of the greatest threat known to mankind.

How blind, to think that was the end.

Zell's best days are behind him now. His knuckles are permanently bruised, his body a wasteland of scars and tattoos to cover them. His joints swell and pop and his back never stops aching.

He works. Eats. Sleeps. Fights. Breathes. There is nothing else.

Sometimes, he wonders why he keeps going. Why this fight is even worth it, when at the end of the day, he arrives home to an empty train station, to an empty house, and a phone that never rings anymore.

He breathes in the briny sea air as he steps out into the empty night, the storefronts dark and the streets abandoned, and the town asleep under a starless and moonless sky. The heavens went ebony-dark years ago, a casualty of a paranoid Sorceress with a grudge against what lay beyond.

Zell no longer matters to those that mattered to him. Ma passed last fall. He never sees Quistis anymore, their relationship gone sour over a difference of opinion that Zell couldn't forgive. Selphie returned to Trabia eight years ago to help rebuild. Last he heard of Irvine, he was playing a steady gig at a country bar on the outskirts of Deling City, in a part of town that never earned a mention in the tour guides except perhaps a warning to avoid it completely.

None of them reach out to him anymore. None of them call just to say hello. He's on his own now, a victim of choices made before he fully understood how it would impact the rest of his life.

His Ma would tell him that's the way life goes. People grow and change and move in different directions, but Zell feels as abandoned as Balamb's empty streets, as invisible as the moon nobody's seen for the better part of a decade.

The scent of the ocean draws him away from the main street and toward the harbor instead of home. He chooses a spot on the seawall, and watches the waves crash against the breakers just past the port.

In another life, he might have become a fisherman, like his Pa, his days devoted to the catch, his skin prematurely wrinkled from the salt and sun, and his hair bleached platinum from the salt. Maybe he'd marry a local girl and raise kids he wasn't quite ready for, buy a house he couldn't afford, and daydream about being a hero like his grandfather.

In either life, he would long for a different fate, aware too late that the grass was brown on both sides of the fence.

His body reacts to the presence of another before his mind does, ever the SeeD, alert and aware of his surroundings. He doesn't need to see the man in the shadows to know who it is, but bile rises in his throat when Squall Leonhart steps into the blue glow of the street lamp and Zell sees not his old friend, but a hollow, hungry, savage thing come to eat him alive.

The shadows paint Squall's face skeletal, and the sickly, translucent skin of his forearms is marked in strange symbols, runes, filigreed whorls. Unlike Zell, the lines hide nothing. Squall wears his scars with pride.

Squall moves closer and his eyes burn, back-lit by electricity and madness. Not his friend, but a monster, worse than Almasy could ever hope to be.

Zell swallows around the lump in his throat as Squall approaches. He can't remember when he lost them, can't pinpoint the moment it all went sideways. So gradual their descent, it escaped notice until it was too late. Now half the world lay in ruin, and Rinoa as Zell knew her ceased to be.

"Zell."

He sounds the same. Soft-spoken. Calm. Steady. In control. Zell could almost be convinced but for all the other signs to the contrary. If he's here for revenge, Zell won't put up a fight. He deserves whatever punishment Squall chooses to give him.

"What do you want me to say?" Zell asks the sea. He can't look at his old friend without remembering the last time they spoke. "I picked my camp. You picked yours."

"You don't really believe that."

Zell shakes his head. He isn't sure what he believes in anymore.

"You were her best friend," Squall says.

"I was. You and I both know she's not Rinoa anymore."

"She loved you."

Squall sits beside him on the seawall, no longer a threat, no longer a hostile, and his words tear Zell's insides to bloody shreds. He loved her, too. Beyond sense, beyond the bounds of friendship, like a sister, family, and it still holds true. Zell loves her and he never managed to kill his hope for something better. For her, for Squall, for the entire world, they all deserved better, and for all she's done since, he would give anything to go back and switch sides.

"I'm tired, Zell," Squall says. " _We're_ tired."

"I know."

"Then help me."

"I don't think I can do it," Zell says. It's only logical, but Zell wishes for some other option. "I can't."

"You swore to me you'd take care of it," Squall says. "Isn't that your mission? Isn't that what you signed up for?"

"I didn't sign up to kill my friends. I didn't promise you that."

"That's a lie," Squall says. "Don't lie to me."

"Yeah, well, maybe I was hoping I wouldn't have to keep it."

Squall turns his palms toward the sky and watches whorls of light pulse under his skin. Long ago Squall made promises, too, in the heat of the moment, out of desperation to belong, and doomed himself to a fate worse than death.

"What other choice do you have?" Squall asks.

"None of us knew it would turn out like this," Zell says. "Would you have given her your soul if you knew where she would take you?"

Squall's hands ball into fists in his lap. "...yes."

Zell stands and wipes salt-water dampened strands of hair from his stinging eyes. What he wants and what he knows to be true are two different things. Conflicting things, and both options leave a lot to be desired.

The light in Squall's eyes burns out and for a moment, they're just a faded blue-gray, the eyes of a man wounded and tormented by the horrors he's seen. This is the real Squall Leonhart. Not Squall the SeeD, not Squall the Commander, not Squall the Knight. Just a man desperate to set things right.

"How do you know you're on the wrong side?" Zell asks. "How do you know this is how it has to go?"

"Look around you," Squall says. "Look at what she's done. What she's doing."

"You're going to betray her," Zell says.

"No," Squall says, his voice barely audible over the crash of the waves. "I'm trying to save her."

Zell sits down again, his back to the sea. That long ago promise weighs heavy on Zell's heart. Squall, almost as mad as the Sorceress he guards, pleads with silence for Zell's compliance.

 _Keep your promise. If you love her, keep your promise. Please, please, please._

"Will it do any good?" Zell asks. "To save her? Will it change anything?"

"I don't know. Have to try."

"What if I said no? What if I've changed my mind?"

The unearthly light bleeds back into Squall's eyes, blue steel, electric, inhuman, and Zell's fists clench against his thighs.

He misses his friends. He misses his family. How can Squall ask him to do this? To put his hands around her neck and choke the life out of her? To watch the life drain out? To murder his best friend in cold blood? How an he ask that?

"Then we keep suffering," Squall says. "You. Me. Her. The whole damn world. It won't stop."

He expected no other answer. It won't stop. Not ever. Even if he ends Rinoa's rampage, someone else will take her place. Maybe not right away. Maybe not ten years from now. Maybe not in half a century, but eventually the magic will out and the cycle will repeat. They can't defeat or kill it. Magic is immortal and endless and and no matter what they do will always return unscathed.

What's the point of fighting it? Why not give in? Accept and embrace a thing that always was and will always be?

"Do it yourself," Zell says. "Like you promised _her_."

"She won't let me."

Rivers of light twist under Squall's skin, the steady luminescent heartbeat-pulse of power visible in his veins. Zell does not envy the corrupt magic that will destroy both of them in the end, but at least they are not alone. Even if they never had a chance at real happiness before it dissolved into a hell neither prepared for, at least they have each other.

Zell can't say the same for himself. No one's got his back. Not anymore.

"Help us. Please. If you kill me first-"

"Shut up!" Zell shouts. "I don't want to hear it."

Zell chose the wrong road the first time around, and faced with another shot, he can't make the same mistake he made before. He's not loyal to SeeD. Not when they're so willing to throw lives away like trash in exchange for Gil, even the lives they built their stellar reputation on. He owes them nothing.

The last time Zell knew anything good or happy or felt like he belonged anywhere was in the company of friends. His choice now is between an empty house and a phone that never rings, and a chance of belonging again. He'll take a nighttime sky absent stars over the crushing loneliness and endless monotony of his life as it is. He'd rather stand beside a monster than spend another day on his own.

He pats Squall's shoulder and breathes in the salty night air, his decision less difficult than it should be, but he knows where his loyalties are.

"I can't kill her. Or you," he says. "But, hell if you guys want to start a fire, I'd be honored if you let me light the match."


End file.
